Beyond the Fire: Darker Futures
by Neutral Ground
Summary: Beyond the Fire AU. David Anderson never saved Nicole Shepard from Shadowhill, an Alliance Black Ops program out of a madman's nightmares. She never became an N7, and she never set foot on the Normandy. For years a young woman was turned into a weapon. And in the year 2183, she is going to be unleashed. Not BTF canon. I make no promises about pairings.
1. Chapter 1: Darker Dawn

_Welcome back to the beginning._

_So, Darker Futures is a little idea I've been tossing around for a while, asking a fairly basic question: what would happen if Nicole was never rescued from Shadowhill? What if she was trapped in there to adulthood, and emerged not as an N7 Alliance Marine, but as an assassin working for an unsupervised black ops program? Darker Futures is, in short, the answer to that question. This will essentially be a novelization of Mass Effect, but things will be … different. _Very_ different. It will also probably be quite a bit shorter and more concise, since I'm freeing myself from the narrative structure of the game._

_If you haven't read the first Beyond the Fire, not a whole lot will be crucial to read this: reading the first chapter might be a good idea, but I don't think it's necessary unless you want that extra bit of background. Darker Futures has the same starting point as Beyond the Fire, but things diverge very rapidly after chapter one._

_And finally: as the name would suggest, Darker Futures is not a terribly pleasant story. Themes of violence, torture, emotional and psychological abuse and manipulation, and physical mutilation are all present. I don't intend to make light of that kind of thing or use it as a cheap route to thrills, but if you're uncomfortable with any of that kind of thing, this might not be the story for you._

_Okay. Pre-amble done. And now our story begins…._

XXX

As the _Dragon_ bore down on Eden Prime, Tobias felt the gentle rush of adrenaline that he associated with a mission. He felt, or thought he felt, the biotic pump in his chest beating faster, the pump he had instead of a heart. It was attached to a black exoskeleton that traced a pattern along his bones, glowing with fine blue lines among the metal. Their ship was small, but more than roomy enough for two people, and equipped with a stealth drive—a smaller verison of the stealth drive that was aboard the _Normandy_, orbiting the same planet right now. The Alliance didn't know their plans had been leaked into the small Cerberus cell once known as Shadowhill.

The Alliance, it turned out, didn't know a lot of things.

Tobias looked back over one shoulder, out of the cockpit and down into the medical center at the heart of the ship, where his counterpart was looming, running a systems diagnostic. She was back-on to him, hunched over in a backless chair, muscles twisting in her back unnaturally around the large, tear-shaped black marks on her skin. At first glance you might think someone had extensively tattooed her, before you realized that the tattoos ran all over her body, that they centered around her muscle groups, that they were beneath the skin and bit into the flesh, and that they glowed with the softest red light. They trailed from her back and along her arms and up onto her neck, even onto the sides of her head, making fine, artlike patterns through her shoulder-length tangle of fire-red hair. There was a long wire running from a device at the side of the ship directly into one of the cybernetic implants in her neck.

"Systems good?" Tobias asked softly, or as softly as he could. The biotic exosuit Gabreau had grafted onto his skin had permanently altered his voice, adding a rough growl to his normal smoother tones. Nicole had escaped that, at least. But not much else. She looked over her left shoulder and stared at him with her left eye, the eye that had been gutted out and replaced with a cybernetic one, black as night with a glowing red iris in the center.

"No. On the last mission I over-exerted myself. Burned through the nanites." Her voice was clipped and cold, the way it always was. But Tobias knew her, had known her for every day for the past five years they had shared as Gabreau's monsters. He could hear the softest shudder, the softest hint of fear. She hated admitting weakness, any weakness. No doubt that was why Gabreau had engineered one for her. "I'll need more."

"I'll signal the Hill and request he open the storage," Tobias said mechanically. And then, because he could not help it, because though sentiment had been trained out of them he still knew that it resided somewhere inside them both, he added gently, "I'm sure he'll approve."

"He has to. Unless he wants me seizing up down there." There was the slightest lilt in her voice. That was as close as she came to joking. Tobias sent the signal back to the Hill—no longer Shadowhill, not now that the two DRAGON-class agents were active. Gabreau had explained that they were no longer creatures of shadow, but creatures of fire.

_Meant to burn, destroy, to vaporize. He can be unsubtle_, Tobias thought, with both disdain and affection. Neither of them quite knew what to make of their surrogate father. Their creator.

The signal came back almost immediately, a simple text message flashing onto the cockpit's controls.

_XGS DRAGON-012 approved for additional nanite injection. Reminder not to overdose._ They always included that last part. "Reminder not to overdose." As though she ever would. As though she didn't hate every minute of it. Tobias seethed at that sentence, knowing what Gabreau was doing. Knowing that he was trying to tell Nicole that she was like Ten, or Thirteen, the drug-addled addicts who Gabreau sent on lesser missions. The inferior specimens.

"You're cleared for injection," Tobias said automatically, dialling back one of the switches in the cockpit as they entered the atmosphere. Eden Prime was supposed to be a beautiful world, but as they broke through the orbit all his cameras saw was fire, oxygen burning against into their night-black hull. Their ship released absorptive gel at exactly the rate needed for safe atmospheric entry, no more. This made it so that the ship was harder to detect, but it also meant that all he could see on his camera was fire.

He heard the hissing of a container being released, and forced himself not to look back. He knew what she was doing. Injecting a long tube filled with thousands of teeming nanomachines into the port on her neck, the nanomachines that fuelled her implants and let her function. He had always been surprised that Gabreau had done that to her, made her so dependent. He had always thought that Nicole had been his favourite.

_No. No favourites with Gabreau. Only tools._

"I'm done," Nicole said. He didn't need to know her well to hear the bitterness in her voice. He didn't look back, wanted to let her be alone in this. "Diagnostic complete. Systems optimal."

He heard the rustling of clothing, and the sudden swish of a long jacket. When he turned around, Nicole had pulled a grey tank top over her torso, and wore a long, dark trenchcoat, the sleeves clinging tightly to her shoulders and arms. Like him, she wore tight, black pants made of a Kevlar-like combat mesh with a pistol strapped to her right thigh, and a combat knife strapped to the other. He was the first to admit that their clothing was dramatic at best, and downright fetishistic at worst—he wondered if Gabreau had chosen that consciously, too.

"How're we dropping?" Nicole asked, as she turned to the weapon rack at the other side of the medical center. She selected a collapsed black sniper rifle and slung it over her back, in the same effortless, fluid way she always did. She wore gloves on both her hands, hiding her fingerprints. Tobias didn't bother with that; instead he burned his fingerprints away with small biotic flares.

"We'll drop together this time. Should be fun, don't you think?" Tobias grinned out of the side of his mouth at her. Nicole's stare, always so unsettling with her one metallic black eye and her one human one, didn't change. But he kept smiling, and he finally leaned back in his chair and cocked an eyebrow at her. She managed something that could have, in a very generous world, been called a grin.

"Like old times."

"Like Torfan." Tobias stretched and rested his hands on the back of his head. "Those Alliance soldiers never knew we were there."

"They should've. What, did they think seventy-nine batarians dropped dead?" Nicole snorted.

"I don't think they were thinking about anything aside from killing the batarians in front of them," Tobias whispered. "Certainly our hero was a little pre-occupied—Vargas, the one on the _Normandy_. The one who's supposed to be the Spectre."

Nicole glanced at the pilot controls and scoffed.

"Just some soldier."

"Mmhmm," Tobias agreed. "Just some human. You want me to do the deed?"

"No. I'm better at that sort of thing."

"I know you don't like it, Nicole."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Nicole." Tobias looked back at her. "Have you ever known me to be a ridiculous person?"

Nicole's expression was unchanging as she said: "Of the two of us?"

Tobias actually laughed at that one, and went back to the pilot controls.

"All right. You wipe the marines, I'll get to the ground and find Williams." The girl from the distress beacon. The one who had been their first clue about the Prothean beacon. "Implicate the geth. The Alliance are still using outdated sensors—no doubt they've missed the geth vessel hovering at the edge of the system."

"You wouldn't think something that size would be able to hide," Nicole commented lightly. It was Tobias's turn to scoff.

"Nicole, you are exceptionally gifted at shooting people and at ripping metal doors from their hinges. Let the pilot worry about the finer mechanisms of ultra-long range scanning."

"Right. You do the thinking. I hit stuff."

"That's the spirit." When he looked back at Nicole, the corner of her mouth was turned upwards, as though against her will. "We'll be within drop distance soon. Better code in."

"Right." Nicole brushed back the right sleeve of her shirt and tapped one of the glowing veins in the black cybernetics along her forearm there, triggering her implanted omnitool. Tobias couldn't see it—you needed a cybernetic eye to see the images projected from her implants, and Tobias felt no urge to have his eye ripped out to share that privilege. "XGS-dragon-zero-twelve coding in."

Tobias, for his part, activated the omnitool that was embedded in his exoskeleton. His own display was much more typical.

"XGS-dragon-zero-nine, coding in." With both his and Nicole's codes entered, a little green light blipped on his omnitool. Tobias's smile gained relish. Now, he had command of the mission. For the last time, he keyed the recorder that would send a message directly to Gabreau. "Dragon-squad ready to deploy."

Tobias set the ship to descend to the orbital level and got out of his pilot's chair, turning to face the rest of the ship. Nicole was standing there, having slung her sniper rifle down over her shoulders. Standing erect in the center of the ship, her long trenchcoat trailing the ground around her feet, Tobias could appreciate the deadly grace and raw physical power she carried with her so easily. Gabreau had done his work well on the both of them.

"Alliance marines typically have low level shields and moderate armour, shouldn't need disruptor rounds," Nicole was muttering. It was for his benefit, he knew, in case anything during the mission would rely on his knowledge of her kill methods. That didn't make her cold, dispassionate tone any less disturbing. She unslung the sniper and flicked a pair of switches on the sides, the long, rectangular black weapon glimmering with holographic symbols. Apparently satisfied, she stowed the weapon and jerked her head at him.

"All right, let's go."

They descended down the long hallway of the piloting section, dodging around the surgical chair and array of machinery Nicole spent so much time attached to, and down through the small, second level of the ship, a large oval which housed their living quarters along the flank. At the center of the oval floor was a large panel which could fall away to open the bottom of the ship. Nicole took her place on the panel without instruction, and Tobias joined her. As she looked at him, a series of fine wires twined their way out of the black implants along her neck, splintering into an even finer network of fibers that reached around her face to form a thick mask which concealed her lower jaw. He wished she wouldn't stare at him as that happened. He, meanwhile, summoned a biotic barrier around his head.

"Dragon-squad, away," Tobias ordered, and at once the floor gave away and they plummeted through the air in rapid freefall. Tobias grinned broadly as he felt the sudden exhilaration of falling out of the sky, the ground rushing violently up at them. As they approached, he reached out with his biotics and ensnared them in a massive, swirling cocoon, cushioning them against the force of impact. As they landed, the cocoon imploded, the energy retracting in on itself and absorbing the noise. When he looked at Nicole, the mask around her mouth was already unravelling and retracting back into the implants in her neck. Her left eye was glowing faintly red, indicating she had already overlaid her vision with her targeting visor.

"My targets are going to be southwest, emerging near likely landing cite Delta," Nicole informed him. Tobias gave a short nod and consulted his own omnitool.

"I'll search for civilians at the space port. We'll rendezvous once you've disposed of the nonessentials." Nicole nodded brusquely and pointed in the direction of the spaceport. Tobias watched her leave and wondered why she had insisted on being the one to kill the marines. He knew she hated it, knew she didn't have nearly the stomach for it that she pretended to have. Maybe that was why. Maybe she thought that if she did it enough it would get easier.

But Tobias knew better, or he was at least a little more self-aware. He knew that Gabreau would never let their lives become easy. There could be no pity for creatures like them.

XXX

The worst part of it was the adrenaline rush. Gabreau must have designed that, she was sure of it. Whenever she stuck that tube into the slot at her neck, whenever she felt millions of tiny machines forcing their way through her veins like grains of sand, she felt exhilarated. She hated it. Hated that she could still feel the aftereffects. Hated that it made her feel sharper, more focused. Hated that there was no other option for her.

For a long time she hadn't allowed herself to hate, or to feel anything. But before long that hadn't been enough. Hatred gave her a sharper focus than an endorphin rush ever could. Anger gave her life meaning that Gabreau, for all his speeches about the destiny of humanity, had failed to impart in either her or Tobias.

She left deep footprints in the soft earth of Eden Prime, her footsteps heavy with the weight of her implants and modified body. The terrain was rendered in fine red lines by the implants in her left eye. The lines guided her to a hill that overlooked the landing site she knew Vargas and her crew would use. The Alliance used protocols, which made them predictable. For that reason Gabreau ensured that they had few protocols to follow, which was one of the small pleasures Nicole took in life.

As she reached the hill she laid flat on the ground and unslung her rifle, propping it up on the ground at the edge of the cliff. Her weapon was large and heavy, with two separate barrels that could each be calibrated differently. One fired a fraction of a second quicker than the other, so she could fire both barrels in one short burst; she had her first shot calibrated to fire armour-piercing rounds, while the second would fire a shattering round to skewer the flesh. She fitted the scope to her right, still-human eye and triggered the mental command to force her left eye to act only as an extension of her sniper's scope. The sensation was always disarming, suddenly losing vision in her left eye, but it made her a better marksman than any normal human.

_"XGS-DRAGON-012."_ Nicole winced as a voice erupted in her head, channelling through the communications embedded in her omnitool. It wasn't Gabreau's voice, but an automated message that only he could have sent, droning in monotone inside her head. _"Reminder to exterminate all nonessentials. Mission failure is unacceptable."_

She forced her eyes shut and waited for the voice to speak again, but it didn't. Breathing a sigh of relief, she looked back down her scope again. She wasn't sure just how far the control Gabreau could exert over her implants went, but every time he sent her one of those messages, she was reminded that she didn't want to find out. She couldn't disobey.

This was what she had been made for.

She lay in wait for over an hour as the _Normandy_ stole into orbit and deposited three soldiers on the dirt. They were outside the range of her sniper, but she knew they would wander into the kill area she'd established. They'd want to get to the Beacon, and they'd want to take the quickest, safest route there. Nicole was counting on that.

Like clockwork, three little blips flickered at the corner of her vision, telling her that three heat signatures consistent with humans in Alliance armour had just wandered into range. She pointed her rifle at the narrow pass where she knew the marines would emerge, from out around a high rock wall. She set her scope at eye level and waited.

A young soldier ran out first, almost quicker than Nicole expected. Before she could even pull the trigger, a geth sentry drone gunned him down, lacerating his chest and spine with high-impact bullets. He hadn't even thought to raise his shields.

A biotic barrier bloomed around the boy's body and two more soldiers ran out, trying to drag the boy behind cover. One was a male, the biotic, while the other was a female and clearly the Commander, wearing jet black armour with a red-and-white stripe down one arm. That was Vargas. The Spectre-to-be. Nicole had seen her once before, on Torfan, where people had started calling Vargas "the Butcher." She was competent and commanded soldiers well. She possessed many admirable qualities. Nicole didn't want to kill her.

As Vargas extracted a medigel packet to try and work on the boy soldiers wounds, Nicole placed her head in the crosshairs overlaid on her vision. Nicole couldn't make out the face through the helmet, but she didn't need to. She knew what Delilah Vargas looked like. Knew, despite all the infamy, that she was a good person who cared about her crew. And Nicole knew, with a stab of regret, that Vargas's care for her crew was going to get her killed.

She raised her rifle up and to the right and squeezed the trigger. Two loud explosions issued from the twin barrels of her gun and bullets roared through the air. Nicole didn't have to look to know that the bullets hit their mark, that the first ruptured Vargas's armour and that the second skewered her skull in a burst of bright red mist. She swung the point of her barrel and the crosshairs in her scope to the other man, who was frantically running towards Vargas's body. Foolish; she was clearly dead. Nicole executed the other soldier as easily as she had the first, and then, for good measure, gunned down the geth that had gathered in the clearing before they had time to triangulate the position of the shooter. She activated her comms.

"Nonessentials eliminated."

"_Excellent. Meet me at these co-ordinates_." Tobias beamed a set of co-ordinates into Nicole's omnitool, and then went silent. His tone had been pleasant and cloying, as though he were trying to hide in the growl in his voice. That was an easy enough riddle to solve: there was someone still with him. Someone useful. Nicole brought the co-ordinates up on her omnitool, on the projection that only her cybernetic eye could see. It was always red, always a deep, burning red. Tobias wanted her to join him in the space port. She collapsed her sniper rifle and slung it over her shoulders, turning her back to the valley below, the valley filled with the dead bodies she'd put there.

XXX

She found them standing over a dead body in what once must have been a shipping yard. In amongst the piled up crates and pieces of debris, Tobias was with a human woman in white-and-pink armour, contemplating a turian corpse. Nicole approached from behind, but the heavy thud of her footsteps gave her away. Tobias turned around and nodded in greeting; the woman stared slightly too long, shocked by Nicole's appearance. Most people were.

"Who was this?" Nicole asked, gesturing to the corpse.

"Nihlus Kyrik, a turian Spectre," Tobias explained gently. "Nicole, this is Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams. Chief, this is Nicole, my accomplice I told you about. The Chief here has been telling me about how her squad were ambushed by geth."

Nicole looked at the woman, appreciating that she didn't immediately avert her gaze. She had handsome features, and had tied her hair back in a tight bun that was starting to come loose. Her armour was dented and there was a scratch on one of her cheeks, but she otherwise seemed healthy. Nicole expected to see defeat and weariness in her eyes, but instead she only saw silent, burning anger, and a thirst for revenge. That, too, Nicole could appreciate.

"We're here investigating the geth as well," Tobias was saying. "So for the time being it would seem our interests have aligned. Would you be so kind as to direct us to the beacon?"

"I'm still not sure who the hell either of you are," Ashley replied bluntly. Tobias put on his warmest smile.

"As I said, we're Black Ops. The reason you don't know about us is because the Alliance doesn't want the word to get out about—well, you can tell we've obviously had more than gene therapy. The other Alliance marines are dead, ambushed by geth when they landed planetside. I'm afraid, Chief Williams, that we're your only option. We can't risk the geth making off with the Beacon before the Alliance can send reinforcements."

Ashley looked away, a muscle flexing in her jaw. After a moment's deliberation, she looked back to Tobias.

"It was supposed to be here, in this clearing. I saw it just this morning. The geth must have moved it. If I had my guess, they'd take it to the space port using the tramway. That'd be easiest."

"Right, then, let's get a move on—"

"Wait," Nicole said, speaking for the first time. She activated the cybernetic overlay in her eye, and scanned the area around them. Two blips for Tobias and Ashley … and then a third. With a subtle twitch of her left hand she switched her vision to infrared and looked around. In a sea of violent red and blue light, it was easy to see the lone human huddled behind storage crates. Nicole walked over and ripped the crate he'd been hiding behind out of the way. Immediately he screamed and backpedalled away from her, throwing his hands out in protection.

"Shit shit shit don't shoot!"

Nicole glanced back to Tobias, who was already making his way over. He knelt down next to the man and gently persuaded him to calm down, to tell him what he'd seen. In short order the man explained that he'd seen another turian named Saren gun down the Spectre, though Nihlus had at first thought that Saren was his friend. Tobias convinced him to hide again, and made a small hand signal to confirm to Nicole that she didn't have to kill him. As Tobias walked by her, he muttered beneath his breath,

"No reason to kill assets when we don't have to." He raised his voice to speak to Ashley, in that disarmingly cheerful tone of his. "Now that we're all one harrowing story of betrayal richer, let's go to see about that tramway."

Ashley didn't say anything as they walked. That was fine. Nicole preferred the silence; she didn't mind Tobias talking, but that was only because Tobias knew that she just liked to listen. She didn't like to talk. She didn't like how people always expected her to say something herself. By the time they mounted the tram, her cybernetic overlay had already activated itself, warning her that there was unfriendly activity nearby; geth activity. She caught the corner of Tobias's eye and nodded. He nodded back, but didn't seem bothered. He was always confident.

"There are geth. Let me take care of them," Nicole said, unslinging her sniper rifle as she spoke. She checked the sights as it locked into place, whizzing and clicking with abrupt efficiency.

"I can fight," Ashley insisted automatically.

"Not like her," Tobias promised. He was still smiling. "Don't worry, neither can I, and I'm probably the strongest living human biotic. With one or two possible exceptions."

Nicole was already kneeling, looking into her sniper scope. Again her left eye de-activated and synced with her scope. The tram was whizzing rapidly, but it was only moving forward, parallel to a long series of platforms at the spaceport. Nicole could already make out several geth in her scope. Dialing a small button on the side, she re-calibrated the first shot to disrupt shields, and her second shot to pierce armour. Then she lined up her shots. First the two easiest geth, standing in the middle of one platform. Then a geth that was partially hidden behind weak cover; then the last two she could see, standing around the edge of a corner. They were guarding something.

They came in range. She fired five times, ten shots roaring from her rifle in staccato bursts of two, the geth shattering and warping into pieces of twisted metal. She paused to see if any reinforcements were coming. There weren't. Unsurprising for the geth. Individual units were disposable, didn't represent the monumental loss that organic races perceived when someone died.

"Is that all of them?" Tobias asked briskly, the warm emotion snapped away from his voice like ice breaking over water.

"Yes. But there's something else. My eye's picking up radioactivity. I'm guessing a dirty bomb." Nicole paused and tapped the implant on her wrist, enabling a more dedicated scanning algorithm. There was a reason she had to turn it on; activating her embedded omnitool's more powerful effects drained her nanites much more rapidly than normal. She didn't like to think about it. "Time to detonation is three minutes."

"Disarm it," Tobias said. Nicole nodded. When the tramway skidded to a stop, Nicole walked off. She didn't run, but she did move quickly. When she reached the device she took one look at it, determined it was a standard model, then drove her fingers between the gap in one of the metal panels and ripped it off. By applying a basic program on her omnitool she rendered the device inert before Ashley and Tobias caught up to her.

"That was solid plate metal," Ashley said. When Nicole looked back, she saw Ashley was staring at the metal panel she'd ripped off, bent around her handprint.

"Those implants aren't for show, you know," Tobias said dryly. Ashley looked like she wanted to say something but couldn't think of exactly what it was. Tobias saved her the trouble. "The beacon should be ahead, yes? Let's move along."

The beacon was standing at the far side of a clearing up ahead, a slim metal pillar that pulsed in strange rhythms with a faint green light. The clearing was empty save for the beacon, which appeared almost sacrosanct and holy, standing alone on that lonely, flat metal surface. Here was technology that had somehow survived fifty thousand years, and now it was standing alone on a prefabricated clearing space on a human colony. It almost seemed sad, its rhythmic pulsing like a quiet heartbeat.

"It wasn't doing that when they dug it up," Ashley said. She was approaching it, slowly. Nicole felt the same impulse, though she wasn't sure why. She didn't trust any impulses whose origins she couldn't place.

"They turned it on," Nicole observed.

"The question," Tobias said, taking a step towards the artifact, "Is why they left it—be careful!"

But no sooner had Tobias spoken than Ashley had walked an inch too close to the beacon, and a tendril of green light turned shockingly bright and reached out from the pillar, ensnaring the human around her midsection. Nicole's thoughts moved so quickly that she could almost watch them happening. Likely some sort of reaction in the device, something automatic, triggered by millenia-old protocols. Perhaps an information dump. Perhaps just a defence mechanism. Either way Williams was unlikely to survive.

Unlikely to survive. There was still a chance.

Against everything she knew, she felt herself breaking into a run. Almost dispassionately the same part of her that had diagnosed Ashley Wiliams' chance of survival watched herself running, noting how much faster she was because of synthetic muscle fibres woven into the natural ones in her legs. She jumped towards the human soldier, not really knowing why. She knew she jumped farther than anyone else could have. She knew when she pushed the soldier out of the way, it was with such force that she might be injured when she landed.

She knew all those things. But as the light snared her and twisted into her mind, as the dying screams of a distant world intruded on her thoughts, she didn't know why.


	2. Chapter 2: Upgrade

_And we're back!_

_Before the chapter starts, I want to throw up a content warning: there is basically what amounts to torture in this chapter. It's not explicitly described out of hearing a character's reaction to extreme pain, but I want anyone who doesn't like that sort of thing to be aware going in. And thanks, to everyone who's read this little side-project, for reading … it means a lot to me. I'm hoping to update Darker Futures more as the summer goes on and I'm working on DragonRise, but I'll say now what I should've said in the first place: I can't promise to stick to a schedule with Darker Futures. But I'm definitely going to be continuing it; it's just a matter of speed._

_And all that said, on with the show…. _

XXX

Ashley Williams had been following orders for almost all of her life. She'd wanted to be a soldier, sure, and her parents hadn't tried to push her into it—but fate had. Destiny. Her generation couldn't be the first generation of Williamses that didn't produce a soldier. She'd been marked for it since she'd been born. When she'd signed up and shipped out to the training depot in Brazil, it had just been one more step down the path she'd known she was going to take since she was a kid. She was used to taking orders. Used to swallowing good orders and shit orders alike. On Eden Prime she'd followed orders, up until they had gotten her squadmates killed. The entire 212. Now she found herself wondering … maybe if she'd spoken up more. She'd had doubts. Misgivings. If she had acted on them, instead of just submitting to the old Williams curse—

But she couldn't change the past. She was still following orders, though they were a different kind. She doubted very much that Tobias was actual Alliance, or at least that he had actual command authority. But she also knew that his orders weren't backed by the threat of a court martial: they were backed by the threat that he would kill her. The silent, quivering rage that had emanated out from him since his partner had collapsed was proof enough of that.

It would be no good to fight him. Stupid, even if every instinct in her said to strike, to fight back, to get away. But she'd seen enough of what the one called Nicole could do. She couldn't help but sneak glances at the tubes that were attached to Tobias's chest plate, pumping some blue fluid into his neck and into his ribcage. She didn't want to think about what that was, but when Tobias effortlessly suspended Nicole's body with biotics, she was pretty sure she'd found the answer.

Tobias had taken her to a landing site far away from the clearing and summoned their ship down. The _Dragon_ was a black, slim ship with twin engines suspended on broad, angular wings that raked forward. The entire ship was sleek and cruel and angular, like a predator. It landed on the tips of its wings and a large hole in the bottom of the ship opened and a ramp extended to the ground. From the moment Ashley had walked onto that ship, she'd felt trapped. It was small, and cramped, and as far as she could tell there was only living quarters for two, in chambers adjacent to the ovular center of the ship. There was also what looked like a small gym, armoury, bathroom, and even a kitchen.

Tobias carried Nicole's body up to what looked like a surgical chair located in the pilot section of the ship. When he reached the chair, he took Nicole into his arms and laid her down almost tenderly. Then Ashley had to suppress a gasp as he cavalierly pulled a needle attached to a long, black tube from a medical apparatus along one wall and drove it into one of the implants in Nicole's neck.

"You. Up here now. Don't avert your eyes." Tobias's voice had lost any of its smooth pleasantness. Now he sounded brittle, mechanical, and his every word was undercut by a ferocious growl. Ashley walked up the ramp to the piloting section apprehensively, keeping her eyes on Nicole's body. Laying prone in the chair, her limbs unfurled casually on the armrests, Ashley couldn't help but be in awe of her sheer physical presence—but she also felt a sick twisting in her gut whenever she saw those black implants, eerily mimicking the shape of muscle fibres beneath her skin. She hadn't expected it to be so hard to look for so long.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean for that to—"

"Of course you didn't," Tobias said, too quickly. But his voice was still cold. "You didn't think. People like you never think before you act. You haven't learned the cost."

"My entire squad died," Ashley snapped. A darkness descended in Tobias's eyes which made her seriously regret that. He smiled, such a twisted, malicious expression that she was sure it was genuine.

"You think you know what it is to suffer?"

_How the hell does a normal person answer that kind of question?_

She was saved the trouble by a static grinding that erupted over the ship's loudspeaker system, followed by a dispassionate voice that belonged to an old man.

"_Mission control has reverted to the Hill. The _Dragon's_ flight path has been automatically entered. Monitor XGS-dragon-zero-twelve's status as you approach. Approximate flight time is—"_

"Twenty-seven hours, thirty-two seconds," Tobias whispered, entirely to himself. The _Dragon_ was rising rapidly through Eden Prime's atmosphere, leaving the dead behind. As they came into orbit, the viewscreen in the cockpit—barely visible from the medical area—displayed another ship: the _Normandy_, the one Ashley herself had signalled for help.

"Can't they see us?" Ashley asked. Tobias rolled his eyes.

"That image is being projected off of the reflection of the curvature of the earth. They'd only be able to see us if they knew where we were—which they do not," Tobias said. Then he frowned, and rushed forward to the controls of the ship.

"Is something wrong?"

"Gabreau—our leader. He's. Sending a signal out, but it's being hidden and redirected so that it appears to be coming from the _Normandy_." Tobias sounded strange, all of a sudden. Almost frightened.

"What—why?"

"You remember the giant ship you saw entering the atmosphere? The only reason it doesn't see us or the _Normandy_ is that both ships are equipped with stealth drives—which won't be of any use if Gabreau broadcasts their signal, now will they?" Tobias started working at the controls, his body tense. "Gabreau! Gabreau—I know you can hear me, dammit! This is pointless! Senseless! We don't need to—it is not mission essential to kill those people!"

"What—he's going to kill them?" Ashley yelped, reaching past Nicole's chair to better see the viewscreen. Tobias was staring in shock. He whispered:

"He's going to lead the geth ship straight to them."

They didn't see the ship that fired the shot. It must've been too far away. They just saw a bright lance of _something_ piercing the sky, so rapidly that it almost seemed to come into being all at once, like a ray of sunlight. It happened so fast that the _Normandy_ still appeared whole, for a moment, before explosions ruptured the shell of the ship, the hull unfurling like the tortured wings of a thousand birds taking flight. Explosions were quiet in space, and the viewscreen didn't have audio besides.

They both stared in shock for a long while. Even Tobias's humanity had limits, it seemed. He turned violently away from the controls and went back to Nicole's body, holding her hand.

"That was pointless. Stupid," Tobias spat, as though he were confiding in his cyborg companion. "Is this what we are? Wanton murderers? Tell me how that was more clean! Tell me—" But Tobias stopped himself. The comms system crackled into life again.

"_When she wakes, everything she says will be recorded. Her nanites have been completely depleted by the Prothean beacon. She will not receive more until I am satisfied with her story._"

Then silence. Ashley stared in horror, at the black cloaked man kneeling at the side of the sleeping woman, holding one of her hands in both of his. He was bowing over her hand, as though he would whisper into it—but he was frozen, his hair hanging about his face like a veil. Finally he got to his feet and approached her.

"I don't know what Gabreau is going to do with you. He might kill you. He might make her kill you." Tobias laid a hand on Ashley's shoulder, and she had to stop herself from jumping back. She hadn't expected this. She'd never expected to see him so exposed. "She's not a bad person," he whispered. "She doesn't have a choice."

He led her to his own quarters, which were barely more than a broom closet with a bed covered with a single sheet. There was no pillow. He told her to get some sleep.

"Sleep in your armour," he'd said. "We both know you won't feel comfortable in anything else on this ship."

So she found herself sleeping in her armour on a hard bed with one sheet. Her armour alone was hot, and sweaty, and she was sure she would never rest. She kept seeing all the people she'd known dying, over and over again. Kept seeing the geth, the husks … all those monsters. The great hand in the sky. The _Normandy_.

And then she saw nothing….

When she woke she jerked away from a hand that had brushed her cheek, her hand slapping to the pistol still holstered at her side. When she was conscious enough to realize what she was doing, she realized she was looking at Tobias, his handsome face leering down at her.

"Nicole is awake. So you are, too. Come."

"You want me to hear this?"

"You've already heard too much. Might as well hear the rest," Tobias said simply. Her senses snapped to alert quickly after years of rough mornings, and she got to her feet and followed Tobias through the rest of the ship and up to the medical chair. With a spike of fear she realized Nicole was waking, her right, still-human eye flickering open. The other was shut. Tobias rushed to her side and held one hand, carefully avoiding the needle that was still inserted into her neck. Her human eye opened and passed over Tobias, and settled on Ashley. A vein was jumping in her neck, but she didn't move. With what looked like great effort, she turned her head towards Tobias.

"I'm sorry," Tobias said, very softly. "Gabreau said I can't access the nanites until you tell us what you saw. From the Beacon." He sounded gentler than Ashley would have thought possible. The growl in his voice wasn't hidden, but it was natural now, the harsh edge complementing the sincerity in his voice. Nicole's jaw clenched.

"It was blurry, confusing. Like a nightmare. I saw … Protheans. Entire worlds. Being destroyed, engulfed in great hands like—like that ship. I saw monsters, I saw … organics being twisted by machines. And a word. In a dozen languages. Reaper. Beating around inside my skull." As she spoke, sweat slipped down her temple, and when she was done she collapsed against the back of the chair, breathing painful, shallow breaths. Tobias waited for a moment in silence before he raised his voice.

"That good enough for you?" For a moment, Ashley thought he was talking to her, before she remembered Gabreau's omnipresence aboard the ship. There was a faint beeping sound and the medical station, a sheer black panel that would recede to reveal a series of tubes, pumps, and needles, ejected a vial from a small chamber. The vial was filled with a churning, black liquid. Tobias removed the needle from Nicole's neck and returned it to the medical station; then he took the vial and inserted that in the same spot, squeezing gently. The fluid entered Nicole's neck slowly, sluggishly. Ashley forced herself to watch. It was strange, seeing that twisted man, with black metal outlining a skeleton on his skin, being so tender, so gentle. When he was done he returned the vial to the medical station and stepped away.

Nicole took in a sudden, deep breath, her chest rising violently, her entire body shuddering. Soft red light spread down through the fibres of her implants, starting at her neck and moving up her head, along her arms, and down beneath her shirt. Ashley wondered how far the implants went, and then found she had no desire to learn. Abruptly Nicole's left eye opened, a pure black sclera surrounding a ring of furious, shimmering red. She was staring directly at Ashley.

"Why is she here."

"She is a potential asset," Tobias said, still softly. Nicole pushed herself up from the medical chair and pulled off her coat, hanging it over the back. She was wearing a sleeveless grey shirt beneath, revealing her arms and some of her back—entire sections of her muscles seemed to have been woven with black technological fibres, centred in leaf-like shapes. Ashley tried not to stare, tried not to feel sick when Nicole turned, and she saw the implants twisting with the rest of her body. Somehow, she realized that Nicole must have been quite young, probably only Ashley's own age. Tobias seemed older.

_Jesus._

"Ashley, I must be frank," Tobias said suddenly, snapping back to his usual, pleasant demeanor. Somehow that was frightening. "I have no idea what Gabreau will want us to do with you once we arrive at the Hill."

Nicole moved past Tobias effortlessly, and then past Ashley as though she weren't even there. She was shockingly brisk, and her footsteps reverberated with heavy thuds when she walked. Ashley turned around to see Nicole was going to her quarters. She didn't want to know why.

"Let me ask you something, Ashley," Tobias whispered, walking closer to her. She felt less of a chill now, though that didn't mean she wasn't afraid. She'd be an idiot not to be afraid. "When you woke up yesterday, did you ever think your life could end like this?"

XXX

Tobias half-heartedly suggested blindfolding the soldier as they began the docking process with The Hill, but they both knew there was no point. Whether the woman was dead or alive was already pre-determined. Nicole just hoped she wouldn't have to be the one to kill her.

The Hill was the same one it had always been. They'd had to evacuate it once, when an Alliance officer was coming to investigate—but they'd come back shortly after. Years later, Gabreau had explained that he'd installed engines in the asteroid, so that he could keep it mobile. It was still in the same region of space, of course, but its exact location was a mystery, and it was almost impossible to detect without knowing its location.

It was strange, how unsupposing it was. From space it just looked like another asteroid. But as the _Dragon_ lowered itself onto its surface, a rock face gave way and a long air-dock tube reached up, twisting through space like a snake until it connected with the bottom of their ship. Ashley was standing between Nicole and Tobias as they prepared to enter the Hill.

Ashley's face was unflinching despite her obvious fear. Nicole respected that. She admired bravery, and she admired survivors.

Gabreau wasn't waiting for them, of course. He never was. As they descended into the Hill, now long since redesigned since all of its students were out in the field, they walked through a long corridor that led to a broad, open room that Nicole and Tobias called "the waiting room" between themselves. There was a sofa along one wall, and nothing else whatsoever in the room. They figured Gabreau liked making people wait with nothing to contemplate but a too-large, pure white room. Nicole and Tobias sat down, and Ashley sat next to Tobias.

A part of Nicole was almost sad about that, but she refused to allow that part of herself to breathe. Instead, she just sat, and waited. They all waited in perfect silence, even Ashley, who seemed to understand that any violation here would not be tolerated.

Finally, Gabreau spoke, through the speakers embedded in the couch cushions. Ashley, of course, not expecting it, jumped.

"XGS-dragon-zero-twelve, please report to the surgery room."

Immediately her heart jumped into her throat, and her hands clenched into fists. She froze for a moment as she tried to control herself. She had to go. She had to go. She couldn't disobey.

"I'm sure it's just—I'm sure it's just related to the Beacon, Nicole," Tobias said. He was already standing, offering her a hand. She didn't take it, but she did rise to her feet. "He probably just wants to ensure there was no damage to your implants."

"We can't know that," Nicole said, harsher than she meant to. "It's not our place to question it." She had to tell herself that. Had to. Had to take herself out of it, destroy the girl Nicole Shepard, the woman who could feel pain. She was just following orders, like a machine. Machines didn't tremble.

She faced the door leading to the rest of the Hill. It opened, waiting to accept her into those dark corridors coloured with washed out, red light. She took a breath, and stepped through.

And the door closed behind her.

XXX

Ashley didn't say anything. She didn't know what to say. Since she'd stepped onto that ship she'd felt like she was watching something she shouldn't have seen. Tobias's anguish was palpable in the room, even as he sat down, his features composed. He was looking straight ahead, at the blank white wall in front of them. His hands laid on his knees, gripping too tightly. Ashley tried to look away, but found she was only staring at a white wall. The wall alternately numbed her thoughts and sent them into overdrive: her thoughts tried to wander, but she kept returning to the plain emptiness of the wall. Maybe that was what Gabreau wanted.

It felt like hours before they head another sound, though it was probably barely even thirty minutes. But Gabreau's voice finally came up from beneath them; this time, Ashley was ready for it.

"_Tobias."_ He was using names now. _"You're aware I heard every moment of your little outburst on board the Dragon?"_

"Yes. I stand by it. Those people did not _need_ to—"

"_Silence._" The word might as well have struck Tobias dumb. _"Insubordination will not be tolerated, not from you. But I know you don't care about what I do to you, now do you? As long as I don't stop that artificial heart of yours. Isn't that right, Tobias?"_

Despite herself, Ashley glanced at Tobias. His face was perfectly, utterly blank.

"Correct, sir."

"_True. Did you know I had been working on some extensive new upgrades for your companion? This has been in development for quite some time and … I must say, I'm rather proud."_ Gabreau's voice was soft on the speakers, almost delicate. _"As punishment for your actions, Nicole will be awake for the procedure, and she will not be given anaesthetic. The audio output from the surgery room will be broadcast into the—what is it you two call it? 'The waiting room.' Enjoy the show, Tobias. By all means you've done everything to earn it."_

And then the audio shut off. Ashley had gotten to her feet without thinking, her heart pumping, her hand slapping to her pistol. She looked from the door, to the Tobias, and then backed away. Biotic energy was crackling along the surface of his skin, around his implants. He rose to his feet, and turned around. He dug one hand into the couch and started ripping out cushions, his movements first methodical, then frantic, then panicked, until finally he got down to the base, to large speakers. He screamed into them.

"Gabreau! Gabreau! I know you can hear me! I know you can hear me! Take me, goddammit! Don't do this to her, don't you—take me! TAKE ME!"

She had never felt so helpless in her entire life. Tobias screamed futilely into the speaker, banging one fist against it, blue light arcing from his fingers to the metal. The doors around them stayed resolutely closed, and Tobias kept screaming until he gagged, choking on his own throat. He was overcome by a hacking, ugly cough, marked by the growl that was always in his voice. Ashley was seized by a sudden urge to help, to reach out and pat his back. Instead she found herself speaking.

"Is there anything I can do?"

Tobias looked back at her, still coughing in short, quick bursts. His eyes were dark.

"Listen," he croaked. "Listen to her with me."

She thought she could. Until she heard the first muffled gasp of pain. Then the screaming started. Wild, desperate, animal howling echoed through their chamber, shocking in its intensity. Nicole's voice would grow weaker, for a time, and sob, or weep, but always she started to scream. At some point Ashley sat next to Tobias, on the floor with their backs to the sofa. Ashley still thought she might die, still thought that Tobias would probably be the one to kill her. But she couldn't be alone, hearing this.

The screams never stopped. Eventually Ashley stopped jumping every time she heard them. But it never got any better. She could never forget the vicious, tortured humanity tearing through the room. She closed her eyes and begged for it to stop.

And she realized that death would not be the worst thing of all.

XXX

She didn't want to wake up. She didn't want to wake up.

Her body was shaking, trembling, but she barely felt it. She was acutely aware of her nerve endings, tingling rapidly all over her body. She tried to keep her eyes shut. She didn't want to wake up.

A shrill ringing reverberated through the room, and she knew she had to wake up. Cold fear gripped her stomach, a paralyzing response left over from the operation. _No. _She couldn't think about the operation, couldn't think about—

_Knives cut mercilessly into her flesh. Her abdomen, her back, her spine. Paralyzed but able to feel it all. Only her throat was working. And when the first knife pierced her spine_—_then she began to scream._

No. It was over. Done. She'd survived it, somehow, had managed to—

_"XGS dragon-zero-twelve."_ Gabreau's voice was pert and impatient on the intercom. "_Open your eyes."_

Nicole tried to obey, but found only her right eye was responding. Her left eyelid was sluggish, as though there were weights hanging off the ends of her eyelashes. A familiar jolt of fear went down her spine and she tried to wiggle her fingers. It took colossal strength, and she could feel her body straining—but she was only able to barely move the fingers in her left hand, and only the last three on her right. She tried to crane her neck down to see, but no matter how she strained she couldn't lift her head.

_"My mistake. We needed to transition to a different nanite model for your new implants, you see. The old ones had to be burned away."_

Nicole clenched in fear, expecting the uncomfortable yet somehow familiar sensation of the long needle sticking into the port on the side of her neck. But she didn't feel the bizarre sensation of the port opening, didn't feel the technology sliding beneath her skin; instead there was a strange tingling sensation in her lower back, and then—

"AAARGH!" She tried to bite her teeth down, but her teeth might as well have been wired apart for all the good it did. The scream had torn out of her at the sudden, paralyzing pain that travelled up her spine. Only belatedly did she realize that the strange sensation she was feeling was a nanite injection, and that there were two more ports in her upper back, as well. The nanites felt like fluid, sluggishly forcing its way through her muscles, along the artificial paths Gabreau had created, feeding into the natural veins and arteries of her body. It has always unsettled her, knowing how deep he had gotten. And now...

She'd passed out part of the way through the operation, but she remembered screaming. She remembered just how deep Gabreau's instruments had gone. Some part of her mind must have been awake.

_"XGS dragon-zero-twelve, get up. Perform self-evaluation."_

Both of Nicole's eyes flung open, and this time her vision was alloyed with the bright red HUD display her cybernetic left eye granted her. She dismissed it by tapping her right index finger to her palm, and then froze.

Her right index finger didn't feel like flesh. Swallowing slowly, she looked down, and raised her right hand to examine it. Bile rose in the back of her throat and she had to swallow, her head swimming from pain and fear and whatever the fuck else Gabreau had done to her.

He had torn out her index finger, her thumb, and a big chunk of her forearm. In their place was sleek black metal, feeding effortlessly into the implants she already had, biting into her skin. She flexed the finger and thumb and it felt just as they once had—once she got over the sensation, she realized the finger had just as much sensory input as her own finger did. As her own finger had. Slowly, in horror, she curled her hand into a fist, watching the black synthetic fingers moving with the pale organic ones. Her eyes trailed down the heel of her hand and down through her forearm, and then she saw the line between the synthetic flesh and her own skin. There was a small little seal that combined the two, made sure to keep any infection out of the organic part of her body—but then Nicole realized that a vein visible on her skin fed into the synthetic material, that it was somehow pumping into the black synthetic skin. Transfixed, she clenched and unclenched her fist, watching the vein moving, watching the muscles in her forearm flexing with the synthetic flesh.

_"XGS dragon-zero-twelve. This is your last warning. Get up. Perform self-evaluation."_

This time he didn't need to jolt her with an injection of nanites. Nicole forced herself up into a sitting position, then turned so that her legs were hanging off the side of the bed. She took a breath and got to her feet, heavy thuds reverberating through the operation stage when she stood. She was wearing a plain white shirt—a kind of form-fitting tank-top, which was as much as Gabreau was willing to compromise for Nicole's sense of personal privacy—and a pair of white boxer shorts. There was a mirror immediately in front of her, and she flinched at what she saw.

She'd been modified before. She'd known that. Accepted it. But now, all the modifications seemed to run deeper. Her neck, head, and shoulders were laced with fine, vine-like implants that settled around two leaf-like shapes on the sides of her neck; one of them was where her jugular vein was supposed to be. Nicole supposed it had been redirected. The side of her triceps on either arm was the site of another leaf-like, black port into her cybernetics, but when she moved her arm she could see unnatural fibres tensing beneath the surface of her still-human skin; Gabreau's enhanced muscle weave. Her inner quadriceps muscles on either leg had been completely replaced with synthetic tissue, as well as her calves. It was all covered in some kind of black, sleek casing; Nicole traced it with one finger and was able to tell that it was high-quality, bulletproof material. She found herself momentarily wondering why Gabreau hadn't just replaced all of her skin with it, and then felt sick at the thought.

She traced one hand up along her back, and felt the same bulletproof material covering two large sections between her shoulder blades on either side of her spine. There were little vents, ports—but she couldn't quite reach them. She gave up on the effort and shuddered.

At least he'd left her right eye alone: it was still green, still more or less human. Her left eye was as monstrous as ever, all black with a glowing red iris, but she was almost used to that now. Mercifully, her omnitool activated when she tapped the command into her right wrist with her left hand, same as ever; she manipulated one of the little red artifacts that made up its control console, and said,

"Diagnostic on new features." Her voice trembled as she started to speak, then sagged with relief: she'd been terrified her voice would come out as a harsh growl, like Tobias's. Her voice was one of the few things she had left. "Aural output."

Instantly a voice started reading directly into her ear, through a very unusual cochlear implant she'd had installed on her first set of "upgrades." The voice was the same monotone that she'd always associated with Gabreau's orders.

_"Installation of dragonscale combat armour along all major implant ports. This will protect against conventional weapons and shield implants against technological overload and EMP-type attacks."_

So that was what the armour was made for. That was good, she told herself. One less vulnerability. Worth it.

_"Installation of dragonclaw forelimb implant replacing first and second digits of right hand."_ Nicole's new fingers tingled unpleasantly. Just a side-effect of the implantation, or was it supposed to be a message? She suppressed a full body shudder and tried not to think about it. _"Dragonclaw forelimb implant calibrated for heightened precision while using firearms. Brain-to-limb connection reads at 100%. Regular checks should be made."_

That made sense, too, she thought, breathing a sigh of relief. It was only—

_"Dragonclaw personal defense weapon also installed."_ Against Nicole's will, a slit opened in her forearm and a long, razor sharp blade flitted out and locked into place, resting against the back of her hand like some absurd dragon's claw. She froze and tried to remind herself to breathe as she raised her hand, looking at the claw. It was nearly a foot long, made of cold black steel, and held to her implants by a series of fine black wires. Just as she was managing to come to grips with it, the claw sucked back into her implant with a _schlupt _noise, and the implant closed. "_Dragonclaw personal defense weapon activated by forming fist, and then tapping thumbtip against first and second knuckles within 1 second."_

"Okay," Nicole whispered, barely realizing she was speaking aloud. But the voice wasn't done.

_"Nanite control package four-point-oh installed. New nanites more efficient, can thrive off of bodyheat. Replacement cycle with no strenuous activity: one hundred twenty hours. Replacement cycle with increased activity is shortened, to minimum length of 24 hours of continuous high-stress activity."_ That was more or less the same as her old nanite leash for high-stress activity, but much longer while they were just in transit or between missions. _"However, continuous activation of dragonwing personal hardsuit decreases this to a minimum of eight hours."_

Just as Nicole was wondering what the hell a personal hardsuit was, she felt a strange, unspooling sensation in her upper back, and in the mirror she saw dozens of black wires crawling out from the back of her shirt, inching along her skin. She flinched in terror, and then saw wires reaching out of ports from her thighs, and up along her upper arms—and her neck. As the wires spooled out of their casing beneath the black body armour Nicole went utterly rigid with terror, trying not to move. Slowly the wires wrapped tightly around her skin, forming a kind of thick, corded armour all across her body, rising up to her neck where the wires formed a facial mask around her mouth. She took a quick breath and heard her own voice distorted by feedback from the mask, and then a red, holographic distortion hid her eyes, like a brand of fire drawn across her face. She could see through it, but in the reflection it was plain to see. Only just in time she realized her implant-system was still talking to her.

"Repeat last diagnostic line. From dragonwing personal hardsuit."

_"...decreases this to a minimum of eight hours. Usage of dragonwing personal hardsuit in zero-G and zero-atmosphere environments is possible, but only small stores of oxygen can be reserved. Dragonwing personal hardsuit is equipped with medium-grade kinetic barrier emitters, capable of deflecting small arms fire. Dragonwing barriers are accessible while hardsuit is not deployed, but will metabolise nanites at twice the background rate. Boots can be magnetized."_

And then the hardsuit started spooling back into her implants. Nicole realized, with some dark amusement, that the armour had clung over her clothing; at least she wouldn't have to strip to use it. The voice continued, and she forced herself to digest what it was saying, forced herself to believe that this was a good thing. She was stronger now. Better.

_"Dragonwing stim package also installed, activated from within spine. Full range of hormonal and adrenal stimulants can be applied to achieve optimal battlefield performance. Activate through omnitool." _Nicole's breath caught on that one. If it was activated through her omnitool, than anyone with access could activate that system. And she wasn't the only one who had access to her omnitool...

She realized her eyes had flickered to the top window of the operation stage, to the frosted glass which she knew Gabreau was standing behind. She looked back at the mirror, forced herself to look at herself.

_"Finally, shadowhill cloaking system installed. Spinal implant which enables bursts of invisibility. Very high nanite consumption. Activated via touching left thumb to left index finger and left ring finger in rapid succession. This concludes introduction of new features."_

The voice faded away, and somewhere Nicole heard Gabreau saying,

"_Good. Very good."_

But the last feature still had to be tested. Without her entering the command herself, invisibility trickled out from her spine as though water was spreading out from her lower back, consuming her entire body. As her body threatened to completely disappear, the last thing she saw in the mirror was her glowing red eye. Only when it vanished did she permit the tears she'd been holding back to finally drip down her invisible skin.

XXX

When the door re-opened, Tobias rushed forward, a sudden, deadly motion that reminded Ashley just what kind of person he was. He stopped dead in his tracks, though, when he saw the figure in the door:

Gabreau. He had the aged look of someone who was getting up there in years but was still well into the early stages of lifetime extension. Couldn't be older than sixty, and there were few wrinkles lining his sharp, hawklike face. He had a perfectly trimmed white goatee that kept his face angular all the way down to a point, and he wore glasses over his ice-blue eyes. Something in the tint of his eyes told Ashley that the colour was unnatural; genetics, maybe, or just surgery. Either way it was unsettling, unnatural. Ashley found herself wondering if his close-cropped head of silver-white hair was unnatural, too.

"I trust you've had long enough to ruminate on your failure, Tobias," Gabreau said darkly. Tobias only nodded, eliciting a thin smile from his master. "Good. As we speak the _Dragon_ is being refueled and resupplied. There only remains one matter." Gabreau inclined his head towards Ashley.

"If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not kill her," Tobias said, much more lightly than Ashley had suspected. She felt her muscles suddenly tensing, and tried to look around the room for a weapon. Anything she could use. Even if one of Gabreau's super-soldiers could snap her in half, Ashley wasn't about to go down without a fight.

"Make a case," Gabreau said, his lips forming a thin, humourless line.

"Well, there's the fact that just before the Beacon blasted Ni—Twelve, it was painting a target all up and down _her_," Tobias said, jerking his head in Ashley's direction. "Given that we don't know precisely how Prothean technology operates, it'd seem short-sighted to put a bullet through the only other brain that might have some of that data. Twelve's was pretty scrambled."

"Then leave her here, with me. In one of the cells," Gabreau said, with such dismissive finality that Ashley found herself eyeing the sofa. Maybe, if she was quick, she could break off one of the legs. Use it as a weapon.

_For about three seconds, before Tobias rips me in half with biotics._

"I doubt she'll be much use to you if Twelve and I are a dozen clusters away," Tobias said dryly. "We'll find an asari. A professional. Bang their heads together, see what comes up. We both know anyone who tries to go anywhere in Twelve's head without permission will end up lobotomizing themselves."

Gabreau stood very still for a moment, and then his mouth twitched, betraying what was probably meant to be a smirk. Gabreau's eyes narrowed slightly, and he clasped his hands behind his back as he turned to enter the corridor from whence he came. Ashley told herself not to relax, but she could already feel her stomach unclenching, the adrenaline fading away. Her fight or flight response was doing all the thinking for her. The danger was over.

_For now._

The door closed behind Gabreau, and Tobias mumbled,

"Where's Nicole?" Apparently the code-name bullshit was reserved for when Gabreau was in direct earshot. Ashley could almost imagine the years it had taken for that level of subtle disobedience to develop.

There was a sound like a minor electrical short, and all of a sudden some tall, black figure was materializing out of thin air, to the right of where the door to the corridor had been. As her features faded back into view, Ashley had to stop herself from spinning around and trying to wrench that damn table leg free. It was Nicole. Or Twelve. Or her ghost, judging by the way she could rematerialize at will.

She'd changed clothes. Now she wore a tight, sleeveless black vest that looked like it was made of pressure-treated kevlar, and the same black leather pants as before, save with a vertical fold in the cloth that ran all the way down the side.

It took Ashley a second to register that she was actually _more _implanted than she'd been before. Most of her right forearm, as well as the index finger and thumb, had been replaced with black, sleek material, and there were black implants visible on her triceps and neck. Ashley swore that the vine-like implant tracks on her skull had multiplied too, so that now her hair looked woven with black lines that ran along her skull. It would've almost looked artlike if Ashley hadn't heard firsthand how those implants had got there. Instead, it made her want to lose her lunch.

Nicole affixed her with that terrifying, heterochromic stare of hers, the black and red eye glinting malevolently. Ashley told herself that was just a fancy HUD, or a scanner, or something. Nothing sinister. Nicole grimaced, an expression made more malevolent either by her constant, resting snarl of an expression, or her eerie implants. Then she looked at Tobias. Her eyes didn't soften, but the snarl did.

"Gabreau says the next mission's been loaded onto the _Dragon_." Nicole jerked her head in Ashley's direction in almost exactly the same way Tobias had just moments ago. "What are we doing about her?"

"Taking her along," Tobias said, as lightly as the rain. But there was still that growl in his voice. And the way his smile never quite met his eyes. "Until I can think of something better to do with her."


End file.
